Chương 5
“After Frank died, someone came to the house.”
“When?”
“Two nights later.”
“Who?”
“He stayed outside.”
“What did he want?”
“He said Frank had given him something to hold.”
I sat back down.
“What?”
“A key.”
My mother stood slowly.
She reached into the pocket of her apron and removed a small brass key attached to a faded plastic tag.
The tag had once been blue.
Now it was nearly gray.
A number had been written on it in black marker.
214.
I stared at her.
“You’ve had that for six years?”
“Yes.”
“You told me you burned Dad’s records.”
“I told Wade I burned them.”
“What does the key open?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never checked?”
“No.”
I could not keep the disbelief out of my voice.
“For six years?”
Her face changed.
Not fear this time.
Anger.
“You weren’t here when your father died.”
The room went silent again.
“I came for the funeral.”
“Four days.”
“I had orders.”
“I know what you had.”
“Then why say it like that?”
“Because you keep asking what I did as if I had options lined up on the counter.”
She pushed the key toward me.
“I had a dead husband, a diner, bills, and men who already knew where I slept.”
I said nothing.
Her voice lowered.
“I did not go looking for the locker because I wanted to wake up the next morning.”
That ended the argument.
Not because she was entirely right.
Because she was right enough.
Kayla looked at the key.
“Could be a bus station.”
“Could be a storage facility,” Marcus said.
“Could be nothing,” I said.
My mother nodded.
“That’s what I told myself.”
I picked up the key.
The plastic tag was smooth from years of being handled in secret.
“Who brought it?”
“A man named Raymond Cole.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Marcus had already taken out his phone.
I looked at him.
“What?”
“You said you weren’t commanding anything.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re still making that face.”
“What face?”
“The one before you give someone three tasks.”
I ignored him.
“Do not search him on Army systems.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Good.”
“I have Google.”
Kayla snorted.
My mother almost smiled.
For a few seconds we were four tired people standing in the back kitchen of a diner while Luis argued with a supplier on the phone about the price of potatoes.
Then the bell over the front door rang.
Luis leaned through the service window.
“Nicole?”
“What?”
“There’s a lady asking for you.”
“Name?”
“She won’t give one.”
Marcus moved first.
I stepped around him.
“No.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“This is my mother’s diner.”
“That has not exactly improved the security profile.”
The woman waiting near the register was in her late fifties, wearing gardening gloves clipped to her belt and mud on one knee of her jeans.
She looked at my mother, then at me.
“You Frank’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
She nodded toward the key in my hand.
“I wondered when Evelyn would finally give you that.”
My mother came out behind me.
Her face went pale.
“June?”
The woman ignored her.
She kept looking at me.
“Raymond Cole was my brother.”
I tightened my fingers around the key.
“Where is he?”
June’s eyes moved toward the windows before returning to mine.
“He died five years ago.”
My mother covered her mouth.
June reached into her jacket.
Marcus’s hand moved instinctively toward his side, then stopped when she produced an envelope.
She placed it on the counter.
“My brother made me promise that if anybody ever came asking about Frank Turner, I was supposed to burn this.”
I looked at the envelope.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because yesterday I watched Travis Cain shove a seventy-five-year-old woman on Facebook.”
My mother closed her eyes.
June pushed the envelope closer.
“And I’m getting too old to keep being scared of men who expect me to die before I talk.”
June did not let go of the envelope immediately.
Her fingertips stayed on one corner while I held the other.
“Before you open it,” she said, “you need to understand my brother was not brave.”
“I’m not looking for brave.”
“Good.”
Her hand released the paper.
“People always make the dead better than they were.”
My mother flinched.
June saw it and softened a little.
“Sorry, Evelyn.”
“No.”
My mother lowered her hand from her mouth.
“You’re right.”
The envelope had been sealed with two strips of yellowed tape that had collected lint along the edges.
My name was not written on it.
Neither was my father’s.
There was only one word in block letters.
RECEIPTS.
I opened it carefully.
Inside were six photocopied pages, one folded map, and a handwritten note on ruled notebook paper.
The first page was an invoice from Cain Realty Group to a company called Southern Land Services.
The description line read CONSULTING.
The amount was twelve thousand dollars.
The second invoice was for nine thousand five hundred.
The third was for fifteen.
Different dates.
Same vague description.
Marcus leaned over my shoulder without touching anything.
“You recognize the company?”
“No.”
June did.
“My brother worked there.”
I looked at her.
“Doing what?”
“Whatever Wade needed done without Wade’s name on it.”
The sentence was so flat that it took a moment to settle.
“Property maintenance?”
“Sometimes.”
“Inspections?”
“Sometimes.”
“Intimidation?”
June looked toward my mother.
“Sometimes.”
Kayla folded both arms tight against her stomach.
Luis had stopped arguing about potatoes.
He stood behind the service window holding the phone against his chest.
I looked at the handwritten note.
Nicole, if this reaches you, I am probably dead or Frank is.
I stopped there.
My mother moved closer.
“What?”
I turned the page toward her.
She read the line.
Her face emptied.
June spoke quietly.
“Raymond wrote that two days before Frank died.”
I continued.
Wade uses Southern Land Services to create pressure that looks unrelated to property sales.
May you like
Don Harper knows more than he admits.
Do not trust county reports if there is a Cain purchase attached.
